Resthaven Care Community

Resthaven's Quality Improvement Systems

Quality improvement is vital to Resthaven, in fact, it's built right into our mission statement:

Our mission is to glorify God by providing a continuum of quality care and services that demonstrates the love and compassion of Jesus Christ.

We take our commitment to providing quality very seriously, and it plays out in every aspect of our organization. 

1.  Continuous improvement is built into our system.  We always ask, “Is there a better way?”  We measure where we stand currently, make a change, and measure again.  The cycle continually repeats itself. 

We have coaching from an outside, nationally recognized organization, and have established benchmarks drawn from other top-quality organizations who serve seniors the way we do.

2. Resthaven is committed to listening to our residents, clients, staff members, and our community.  We use a variety of tools to gather opinions, and use the results to guide and to support our quality improvement process. 

• For internal measurement, we use a tool from an independent company called My Innerview. This survey system allows us to monitor our own improvement and to compare it to other organizations across the country.  Residents, family members, and staff members are surveyed annually on a variety of topics.  We will also supplement our yearly survey with other, more focused surveys during the year to track our progress. 
    
• We are currently participating in a community-wide assessment of the needs of seniors called A Blueprint for Action, which will also guide our improvement efforts for the future.

3. Resthaven is involved with two nationally recognized quality improvement organizations:

      •  We are members of the American
         Association of Homes and Services for
         the Aging (AAHSA), and have adopted
         their quality improvement program,
         Quality First
         (www.aahsa.org/qualityfirst.aspx).  
         This program promotes transparency,
         accountability, and continual
         improvement. 

• We are also members of Aging Services of Michigan, and are using the quality tools built into their Defining Excellence program.  This system encourages proving quality outcomes with a system that allows us to compare our quality to other similar organizations.  It also helps us identify best practices of those who are excelling so that we can use them for benchmarking purposes.

4. We have made use of technological advances to focus on quality improvement.  More applications are coming, but we are focusing currently in two areas:

• CareTracker is a system that electronically tracks the care of a person in our Care Center, Good Shepherd Home, or Boersma Cottage.  A resident’s Plan of Care is programmed into CareTracker, and it guides the Resthaven employee every step of the way to completing that Plan of Care. 
• Silverchair is a system of delivering education to staff members via the web.  Employees are educated, tested, and tracked to see that each receives the information that they need to keep abreast of the many quality improvements in caring for our Elders.

5. We also know that the key to offering quality services rests in the hands of our systems, as detailed above, but the people who make these systems work are vital.  We are committed to finding and hiring people who can contribute their knowledge and skill to our continuous quality improvement efforts, but who are also committed to sharing their hearts with the Elders we serve. 

We know that the hearts of Resthaven’s people are the most true measure of our quality.